Baba Ramdev once tried to be a politician, launched a party but quickly aborted. Similarly, when the Haryana government offered him a cabinet post, he declined. The entrepreneur in him realised it is wise to remain the power behind politicians to further his business empire.

If it was the Congress politicians during his salad days in business, it is the BJP he has been tangoing with since he laid the ground for regime change. And it has done wonders to his business empire.

In the concluding part of The Collective’s investigative series, we reveal how the Haryana government denied protection to Aravalli forest land while Ramdev’s Patanjali group, through zero-revenue shell companies, traded in the forested land of Aravalli to reap super profits by selling it to real-estate companies.

Let me give you an estimate of the profit, and it will leave you goggle-eyed: One such shell firm received 365% profit from the sale of lands to a builder.

Records and documents reveal a concerted effort from the Haryana government to ensure parts of these sensitive Aravalli Range didn’t get any protection of environment laws. The state stonewalled two crucial Supreme Court orders of 1996 and 2022 that offered protection to these forests, the state deforestation laws and a Union government law that protects ecologically vital lands in and around Delhi.

We traced hundreds of corporate records of 14 companies and two trusts of Baba Ramdev’s empire that have traded in Mangar village in the Aravallis in Faridabad. We found evidence of at least four of these 14 companies and one of the two trusts selling off the lands in Mangar to other real-estate dealers.

Read the concluding part of the #PatanjaliPapers investigative series that reveals how the state’s dilly-dallying helped lay the ground for a real estate business in the forested land of Aravalli and how Patanjali cashed in.

Click here to read Patanjali Papers Part II on The Reporters' Collective website.